"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

He's a world-class professional boxer who, with one more win, could be
fighting for a version of the featherweight title. He aspires to be a
role model, hoping to inspire children to ignore the naysayers and reach
for their dreams. He plans to begin a campaign to end bullying.

There are, and have been, scores of lesbian and gay athletes in
professional sports. Some of the greatest stars in sports history are or
were gay, such as tennis players Bill Tilden, [Who inconveniently preferred underage boys. F.G.] Martina Navratilova and
Billie Jean King, diver Greg Louganis and boxer Emile Griffith.

It remains so rare, though, particularly in male sports, that when an
athlete comes out of the closet mid-career, it's big news.

Cruz wasn't available Wednesday to speak about his decision. He plans to
give what he called "a tell-all" interview to Telemundo next week in
which he'll explain his thought process and why he chose to make public
his secret.

It's really really sad that La [or Le] Cruz isn't brave enough to tell the world whether he's a top, a bottom, or a switch. I guess pride in his "lifestyle" choice and his bravery have limits.

He explained himself quite well in his statement, however, even though the cost of doing so could be quite painful.

Painful? If you think taking a right hook on the chin is painful...

Cruz, who fights Jorge Pazos on Oct. 19 in Kissimmee, Fla., is closing
in on a shot at the WBO featherweight title. He is believed to be the
first openly gay active male boxer.

Women's boxing star Christy Martin announced she is gay as her legendary career was ending.

But Cruz, a 2000 Puerto Rican Olympian, is still in the midst of his
career. It took an enormous amount of courage to make his statement in
this far-too-often hate-filled world.

People dislike others for many reasons, but their race, their religion or their sexual orientation should not be among those.

No doubt, Cruz will face ridicule and scorn from those who are involved
in the testosterone-addled sport he loves, much like the great Jackie
Robinson did when he broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. It may hurt
Cruz in the rankings. Judges may quietly score against him. Some foes
might not want to fight him.

Holy bleeping bleep! How dare you use Jackie Robinson as an anology to excuse sodomy?One of these days, black folks are going to stop morons from doing this to them.

Worst, of course, will be the verbal taunts he'll receive from some
factions of the fan base. They'll feel the need to prove their machismo
by denouncing Cruz for his sexual orientation.

What they will be missing, clearly, is that they lack the courage Cruz
has shown, first by becoming an elite professional boxer and then by
having the courage to admit he is gay in an all-too homophobic world.

"I don't want to hide any of my identities," [He's Batman. - F.G.] Cruz said in his statement.
"I want people to look at me for the human being that I am. I am a
professional sportsman [who] always brings his best to the ring. I want
for people to continue to see me for my boxing skills, my character, my
sportsmanship.

Nothing says character quite like amyl nitrates and glory holes.

"But I also want kids who suffer from bullying to know that you can be
whoever you want to be in life, including a professional boxer [and]
that anything is possible and that who you are or whom you love should
not be impediment to achieving anything in life." He went on to say, "I
am and will always be a proud Puerto Rican gay man."

Ah, bullying. Maybe Cruz and Iole should open up a gym for "gay" kids to teach them how to beat the snot out of hetero bullies. It might work...except for those who discover they like it rough, though. I guess they could always call it love...

Cruz's decision to out himself will help a generation of athletes,
boxers and non-boxers alike. And with the valor he's shown by standing
up to the scorn of the narrow-minded who will mock him, he's made
himself a role model to those he seeks to aid.

Despite the proliferation of weight classes and sanctioning
organizations, winning a world championship still is a cherished
accomplishment reached only by an elite few.

Orlando Cruz may never get that big fight and the opportunity to strap on the title belt.

There's no question, though, that as a man, Orlando Cruz has proven himself a top-notch world champion.

President Barack Obama, stung by bad reviews in his first debate of the
2012 White House race, joked that the "very spirited fellow" onstage
with him was "not the real Mitt Romney." Obama also mocked the former
Massachusetts governor's pledge to cut government subsidies for PBS as
"finally getting tough on Big Bird."

If current voter registration trends continue, both the Republican and Democratic parties may have a serious numbers problem.

Since President Barack Obama was elected in November 2008, the number
of voters registered as independents or with a third party has surged
in several key states, while those registered with both major parties
have dropped off significantly. Among the six battleground states that
provide monthly voter registration data (Colorado, Florida, Iowa,
Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania), all but the Buckeye State
report more independent voters than four years ago.

In states like Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania,
both Republicans and Democrats alike have lost registered voters during
that period. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the parties have shed a
whopping 437,811 registered voters since the last presidential
election.

Based on an analysis of registration data by Media Trackers,
a state-focused nonprofit research group, there are 278,895 more
independent registered voters in Florida than there were four years ago,
246,822 more in North Carolina, 244,814 more in Arizona, 169,944 more
in Colorado, 33,470 more in Pennsylvania and 18,169 more in Nevada.
While some of these voters are registered with third-party groups like
the Libertarian or Green Party, most are registered independents. Still,
the hemorrhaging of party affiliates in key states suggests that
voters there are unsatisfied with the traditional Democratic and
Republican operations.

A closer look at the data in
these states also shows that Democrats appear to be losing registered
voters the fastest. Since 2008, there has been a 9.5 percent decrease in
the number of registered Democrats in Iowa, 6.6 percent in
Pennsylvania, 5.8 percent in Arizona, 5.7 percent in Nevada, 3.8 percent
in North Carolina and 3.7 percent in Florida. Meanwhile, Republicans
have actually seen gains in Florida and Iowa but losses in the other
states. In Nevada, which saw a nearly 6 percent increase in independent
voters, Democrats and Republicans have suffered an equal percentage of
losses.

Despite the shift in these
states, registered Democrats nationwide still outnumber Republicans, but
the number of voters unaffiliated with the major parties continues to
grow.

The trend first became apparent in December 2011, when a USA Today analysis
showed what appeared to be an exodus from the major party registration
rolls in several important states. By that time, more than 2.5 million
voters had shed their official affiliations with the parties.

A high school teacher at Charles Carroll High School in Port
Richmond, Philadelphia, is under investigation after allegedly ordering a
student to remove a pro-Mitt Romney t-shirt. In addition to purportedly
telling the female pupil to take off the clothing, the teacher also
supposedly compared the shirt to a Ku Klux Klan outfit.

The student at the center of the story, 16-year-old Samantha Pawlucy,
claims that she chose to wear the pink t-shirt for a dress-down day,
during which students were invited to select their own clothing. The
teacher’s comments, Pawlucy contends, were humiliating, as the geometry
instructor reportedly encouraged other students — and teachers — to join
in on mocking her.

“I was really embarrassed and shocked. I didn’t think she’d go in the hallway and scream to everyone,” Pawlucy explained in an interview with Philly.com. “It wasn’t scary, but it felt weird.”

In addition to telling the student that Carroll High School is a
“Democratic school,” the teacher said that wearing the pro-Romney shirt
is similar to the teacher, an African American, wearing a KKK shirt.
Pawlucy had decided to wear the shirt after researching the candidates’
stances and landing on Romney as her choice in 2012.

Following the incident, Pawlucy decided to tell school officials —
something the student was initially afraid to do. Already, she’s
receiving some negative feedback from peers and those opposed to her
decision.

“I have some friends that won’t talk to me anymore because of it,” she continued. “Because I told the principal what happened…they’re mad at me.”

Samantha Pawlucy (Photo Credit: Sharon Gekoski-Kimmel/Philly.com)

During a meeting with the principal and the teacher at the center of the dispute, Pawlucy’s parents attempted
to rectify and better understand what unfolded. The teacher, though,
apparently defended herself, said that she was joking and inevitably
stormed out of the meeting.

An official complaint will be filed by the family with the district
on Thursday. According to a Philadelphia School District spokesperson,
the teacher has been moved to another classroom, as officials continue
to investigate the incident.

On Sunday night, the Spanish-language Univision News aired a
“bombshell” hour-long report on their investigation into Operation Fast
and Furious, revealing brand new evidence of international weapons
smuggling by the U.S. government.

In other words, Univision News took on the job that the mainstream
media in the U.S. has failed to do thus far. They also displayed
extremely disturbing images of the bloody carnage that occurred as a
result of the misguided program.

Here are some things you didn’t know about Operation Fast and Furious and other gun-walking operations.

1. 57 Previously Unreported Guns From Fast and Furious Discovered

One of the most explosive revelations made in the Univision News
special involves 57 previously unreported firearms from Fast and Furious
that were reportedly used in a number of murders and kidnappings.

After cross-referencing the serial numbers of guns used in Fast and
Furious against guns confiscated in Mexico, Univision found that about
100 guns were used in crimes and 57 of the guns were not included in an
official congressional investigation.

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men
parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college
students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the
assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La
Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of
nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor
and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and
women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally
fled.

Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the
massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers.
Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de
Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican
army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

The other bloody attack linked to Fast and Furious guns occurred in September 2009 when members of a Mexican drug cartel murdered 18 young men at Salvarcar and El Aliviane, a rehab center in Ciudad Juarez, according to the report.

3. U.S. Gun-Walking Operations Conducted in Additional States, Expanded to Other Countries

The Univision News report also revealed that other ATF offices outside of Arizona initiated similar gunrunning programs.

An ATF field division in Florida reportedly launched “Operation
Castaway,” which put weapons in the hands of criminals in Colombia,
Honduras and Venezuela, according to Hugh Crumpler, the lead informant
in the case, who talked to Univision News from a prison cell.

“When the ATF stopped me, they told me the guns were
going to cartels,” Hugh Crumpler, a Vietnam veteran turned arms
trafficker, told Univision News. “The ATF knew before I knew and had
been following me for a considerable length of time. They could not have
followed me for two months like they said they did, and not know the
guns were going somewhere, and not want for that to be happening.”

4. ‘Confirmed’: Jaime Zapata Was Killed With Weapons From U.S. Gun-Walking Operation

In Texas, even more weapons were allowed to cross into Mexico under
ATF supervision, according to court documents and testimony of Magdalena
Avila Villalobos, the sister of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agent who exchanged gunfire with cartel hit men alongside Jaime
Zapata on a rural highway in Mexico in February 2011. Zapata was killed
during the confrontation.

Villalobos told Univision News the guns that killed Zapata, and
almost killed her brother, were “not from Arizona and Fast and Furious”
but from a “very similar operation.”

“Those weapons that have been recovered, it’s been confirmed that
they were weapons used in the shootout that killed Jaime Zapata and
wounded Victor Avila,” she said.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) along with
Issa have been pressing the DOJ to conduct a formal investigation into
Avila‘s and Zapata’s case. However, just as with Fast and Furious, they
haven’t gotten far.

5. Mexico’s Cartel Violence Spiked in 2009 During Fast and Furious

Operation Fast and Furious was supposedly a program run solely by ATF
that allowed nearly 2,000 guns to “walk” out of the United States and
into the hands of high-ranking cartel members so they could be tracked
and federal agencies could dismantle the drug trafficking organizations.
But that’s not how it worked out. The agency ultimately lost track of
the firearms, leaving Mexico’s powerful drug cartels even better
equipped to kill.

Mexico experienced a spike in cartel violence in 2009 while Fast and
Furious was in full swing, as the gangs fought for control of various
territories, Univision News reports.

Fast and Furious became public after U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian
Terry was killed in a gunfight with Mexican thugs in December of 2010.
Congressional investigators, with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) leading
the way, pushed for investigations and hearings, only to be stonewalled
by Attorney General Eric Holder, the Justice Department and the White
House, who claim Republicans’ interest in Fast and Furious is only
political theater.

President Barack Obama moved to shield Holder and the Justice Department by invoking executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been after for years.

Meanwhile, officials in Mexico are looking for answers because for
them, Fast and Furious isn’t some metaphorical chess piece that they are
manipulating for political gain. The fact of the matter is, they have
lost hundreds of Mexican citizens as a result of the U.S.-run Fast and
Furious — and they want the truth.“Americans are not often moved by the pain of those outside [their
country]…But they are moved by the pain of their own. Well, turn around
and watch the massacres,” Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet who lost his
son due to cartel violence, told Univision News.

So far, it appears that the Mexican television station Univision can
get more answers about Fast and Furious than our own government can.

The majority of conservatives applauded Univision’s Fast and Furious report, but as Twitchy points out,
others accused the channel of doing “Barack’s bidding” by putting all
the blame on ATF and the Second Amendment. To see how people reacted to
the report on Twitter, click here.

What if every farfetched conspiracy theory about Barack Obama turned
out to be true? Two reporters for the The Daily Caller received an
unsolicited manuscript in the mail, the diary of a former Obama
administration political operative. What they read stunned them. "The
Lizard King" describes a White House where the reality is more surreal,
and comically bizarre, than anything its most fervent enemies have
alleged. Tasked by David Axelrod with debunking right wing rumors about
the president, the narrator embarks on a journey that takes him from
Washington to Moscow to the tribal areas of Pakistan in search of the
real Barack Obama. His findings leave him shocked, his political
ideology in tatters and his understanding of the world forever changed.

From ticotimes.net comes the furious backpedaling of the Mel Crapper Jr. of American politics. Watch for G. Wizz's polls to "unexpectedly tighten"...

...“I don’t think there’s any doubt ... that Romney won,” G. Terry
Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at
Franklin and Marshall College, who has monitored elections since 1960,
told AFP.

A flash poll conducted by CNN bore that out: Adult viewers of the debate – by a 67-25 percent margin – said Romney won.

“The president certainly wasn’t on the top of his game tonight,” Madonna said.

Romney
was more aggressive “without being pugnacious or provocative or
combative,” hitting the president on his economic record while steadily
returning to the theme that a Romney presidency would create more jobs
and stimulate faster economic growth than the current administration.

“Was it a huge victory? No. Did the president fall flat on his face? Of course not,” Madonna said.

“But
what Romney had to do was get up on the stage, be the aggressor, make
his points and instill a sense of confidence among Republicans that he
can still win an election ... and I think he accomplished that...”

Sadly, kiddies, modern politics is more like pro wrestling than we care to admit. All of this may merely be a "work". The champ loses a non-title match so he can make a "miraculous" comeback and prove what a great genius and holy man he really is.

The veteran PBS anchor drew caustic social media reviews for his
performance on Wednesday, with critics saying he failed to keep control
of the campaign's first direct exchange between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.
The candidates talked over Lehrer's attempts to keep them to time
limitations, and his open-ended questions frequently lacked sharpness.

Instant Translation: He didn't help The Jug-Eared One look like less of a moron.

Debates don’t move polls. Debate winners do.Mitt Romney won the first debate; virtual every snap poll
and snap pundit agrees on this point. As the 90-minute debate wore on,
the Republican challenger's odds of unseating President Barack Obama
rose about 5 percentage points to 31 percent in the Signal's election
model, driven by gamblers who dumped the president's stock during and
immediately after the faceoff.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Not everyone can get to their parish church each Sunday...Maybe someone who has lost their faith will hit the right button on his remote at the right time and be reminded of the Grace he turned his back on,,,

When the church
doors open for “My Sunday Mass” on TV, viewers join in Catholic prayer
and worship as members of a nationwide community of faith. Catholics
unable to participate in a parish liturgy find welcome and a sense of
belonging by tuning in the TV Mass, now on broadcast, cable, and
satellite channels across the country. “My Sunday Mass” includes prayers
offered by viewers as part of the celebration of Catholic Mass on TV.
We invite you to contact us with your prayer requests.

Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted
along with John Allen Muhammad in the 2002 D.C. sniper shootings that
left 10 dead and three wounded, says he remembers the killings vividly but can't explain why he did what he did.

"I was a monster," Malvo told the Washington Post
in a recent interview from a Virginia prison where he's serving six
consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. "If you
look up the definition, that's what a monster is. I was a ghoul. I was a
thief. I stole people's lives. I did someone else's bidding just
because they said so. There is no rhyme or reason or sense."

Malvo, now 27, was a teenager at
the time of the shootings. Muhammad was executed in 2009. The shooting
spree lasted three weeks before the pair were arrested at a truck stop
in Maryland.

"At that point in time, I had
been desensitized," Malvo continued. "In the midst of the task, there
is no feeling. It got to a point where I'd get in a zone. There was
nothing else but whoever is before me, and anything that comes between
me and, as you would say, the target, I'm either going to destroy, or
if it's too big, find a way around it. Nothing is going to stop me but
death to get that done. ... I was able to tap into a place that if there
was a soul there it was behind layers and layers and layers of
darkness."

Muhammad, Malvo said, was a father figure to him.

"I trusted him," he said. "I was
unable to distinguish between Muhammad the father I had wanted and
Muhammad the nervous wreck that was just falling to pieces. He
understood exactly how to motivate me by giving approval or denying
approval. It's very subtle. It wasn't violent at all. It's like what a
pimp does to a woman."

"He picked me because he knew he
could mold me," he said. "He knew I could be what he needed me to be.
... He could not have chosen a better child."

After their arrest, Malvo said,
he claimed responsibility for the killings in an attempt to save
Muhammad from the death penalty.

"I did everything I thought I
could do to save his life," Malvo said. "It was just a mixture of
half-truths, details that only I or the killer would know, because I was
there. What's crazy is this entire process. I'm concerned for him, and
he doesn't give a rat's a-- whether I live or die."

PITTSBURGH,
Pa. - The Kremlin is watching, European nations are rebelling, and some
suspect Moscow is secretly bankrolling a campaign to derail the West's
strategic plans.

It's not some Cold War movie; it's about the U.S. boom in natural gas drilling, and the political implications are enormous.

Like falling dominoes, the drilling process called hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, is shaking up world energy markets from
Washington to Moscow to Beijing. Some predict what was once unthinkable:
that the U.S. won't need to import natural gas in the near future, and
that Russia could be the big loser.

"This is where everything is being turned on its head," said Fiona
Hill, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in
Washington. "Their days of dominating the European gas markets are
gone."

Any nations that trade in energy could potentially gain or lose.

"The relative fortunes of the United States, Russia, and China — and
their ability to exert influence in the world — are tied in no small
measure to global gas developments," Harvard University's Kennedy School
of Government concluded in a report this summer.

The story began to unfold a few years ago, as advances in drilling
opened up vast reserves of gas buried in deep shale rock, such as the
Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania and the Barnett, in Texas.

Experts had been predicting that the U.S. was running out of natural
gas, but then shale gas began to flood the market, and prices plunged.

Russia had been exporting vast quantities to Europe and other
countries for about $10 per unit, but the current price in the U.S. is
now about $3 for the same quantity. That kind of math got the attention
of energy companies, and politicians, around the world.

Some European governments began to envision a future with less
Russian natural gas. In 2009, Russia had cut off gas shipments via
Ukraine for nearly two weeks amid a price and payment dispute, and more
than 15 European countries were sent scrambling to find alternative
sources of energy.

The financial stakes are huge. Russia's Gazprom energy corporation,
which is state-controlled, had $44 billion in profits last year.
Gazprom, based in Moscow, is the world's largest producer of natural gas
and exports much of it to other countries.

But last month Gazprom halted plans to develop a new arctic gas
field, saying it couldn't justify the investment now, and its most
recent financial report showed profits had dropped by almost 25 per
cent.

The U.S. presidential campaigns have already addressed the strategic potential.A campaign position paper for Republican Mitt Romney said he "will
pursue policies that work to decrease the reliance of European nations
on Russian sources of energy."

In early September, President Barack Obama said the U.S. could
"develop a hundred-year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our
feet," which would "cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more
than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone."

Poland's Ministry of the Environment wrote in a statement to The
Associated Press that "an increased production of natural gas from shale
formations in Europe will limit the import via pipelines from Algeria
and Russia."

The issue has reached the highest levels of the Kremlin, too.

Hill, of the Brookings think-tank , heard President Vladimir Putin
speak in late 2011 at a Moscow gathering of academics and media. She
said in a blog post that "the only time I thought that he became truly
engaged was when he wanted to explain to us how dangerous fracking was."

But one top Gazprom executive said shale gas will actually help the
country in the long run. Sergei Komlev, the head of export contracts and
pricing, acknowledged the recent disruptions but predicted that the
U.S. fuels wouldn't make their way to Europe on any important scale.

"Although we heard that the motive of these activities was to
decrease dependence of certain countries on Gazprom gas, the end results
of these efforts will be utterly favourable to us," Komlev wrote in an
email to the AP. "The reason for remaining tranquil is that we do not
expect the currently abnormally low prices in the USA to last for long."

In other words, if the marketplace for natural gas expands, Russia
will have even more potential customers because it has tremendous
reserves.

Komlev even thanked the U.S. for taking the role of "shale gas global
lobbyist" and said Gazprom believes natural gas is more environmentally
friendly than other fossil fuels.

"Gazprom group generally views shale gas as a great gift to the
industry," he wrote. When natural gas prices rise, "it will make the
U.S. plans to become a major gas exporter questionable."

Whether exports happen involves a dizzying mix of math, politics and
marketplaces, along with the fact that U.S. natural gas companies — and
their shareholders — want prices to rise, too.

James Diemer, an executive vice-president for Pace Global, an
international consulting company based in Virginia, believes that shale
gas costs more to extract than the current market price. Pace, which
recently released a report called "Shale Gas: The Numbers vs. The Hype,"
has been studying shale gas for Gazprom and other clients.

"The capital will stop flowing" to U.S. shale gas, and the price will
go up, Diemer predicted. He would not divulge the kind of work Pace is
doing for Gazprom. Pace is owned by Siemens, a German company.

Pace's work for Gazprom has raised some eyebrows in Washington, and
Hill noted that industry watchers in Europe already believe Russia is
bankrolling environmental groups that are loudly opposing plans for
fracking in Europe, which could cut down on Russia's natural gas market.

"I've heard a lot of rumours that the Russians were funding this. I
have no proof whatsoever," she said, noting that many critics give the
rumours credence because Gazprom owns media companies throughout Russia
and Europe that have run stories examining the environmental risks of
fracking.

Gazprom dismissed such conspiracy theories, saying that "nothing
could be more out of touch with Gazprom's inherent interests," because
the shale boom promotes gas as an abundant, affordable energy source.

Many U.S. media outlets, including the AP, have run stories about
shale gas and the environment. Regulators contend that overall, water
and air pollution problems are rare, but environmental groups and some
scientists say there hasn't been enough research.

U.S. energy companies are eager to export natural gas products. The
issue is sensitive enough that the Obama administration has delayed a
decision on export permits until after the election. In April, the
Sierra Club sued to block one plan for exports, saying it would drive up
the cost of domestic natural gas and lead to environmental damage.

But just the potential for exports could allow others to seek lower
prices from Russia, said Kenneth Medlock III of the James Baker
Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

"It changes the position at the bargaining table for everybody,"
Medlock said. "You stack all that up, and you start to realize, 'Wow.'"

There's one enormous unknown with the shale gas bounty in the U.S.,
Hill said. Unlike in Russia and some other countries, neither the
government nor any one private company can really control or direct it.

"The question is, can the U.S. do what the Russians do, which is use this as a political tool?" she said.

Damon and John Krasinski take lead roles and share scriptwriting duties for Promised Land. The movie is expected to hit North American theaters on December 28, just in time to make a run at the 2013 Oscars.

Matt Damon portrays a salesman for a natural gas company who is sent
with a colleague (Frances McDormand) to convince farmers to give up
their land for a type of gas extraction called fracking. Things do not
go as planned, however, as Damon's character, who was raised on a farm,
is faced with growing criticism from the local community, leading him to
recant his greedy ways.

From NYMag.com:

The controversial drilling technique known as fracking is part of
a natural-gas boom that many hope will bring down energy prices and
limit America's reliance on foreign oil. But it's not without its
vigorous critics, including many in Hollywood. The latest skirmish is over The Promised Land,
in which Matt Damon and Frances McDormand portray two fracking salesmen
trying convince a small town to sign over its drilling rights. The
trailer, released earlier this week,
shows them promising one hard-up resident a "state-of-the-art high
school" and hinting to another that "you could be a millionaire." Then
the cows start dying, activists start pamphleting, and Damon turns to
threats. "We're a $9 billion company; do you know what we're capable
of?" The message of the movie, directed by Gus Van Sant and written by
Dave Eggers: Fracking comes at a price.

As Markay points out, more domestic gas production means less imported oil (including from the UAE).

All of this suggests a direct financial interest on
the UAE’s part in slowing the development of America’s natural gas
industry. Pop culture can be a powerful means to sway public opinion.
While Promised Land, like anti-fracking documentary Gasland, appears to inflate the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, it may have an impact on the public’s view of the practice.

True, fracking is still a relatively new phenomenon [Wrong. Fracking was invented in 1947. - F.G.] whose full
ramifications remain unknown, but fracking-related methane seeping into
drinking water supplies in Wyoming, Colorado, and Pennsylvania suggests its dangers are real enough. [Eek! - F.G.] What's harder to understand is why Promised Land's
producers went ahead with the Image Media Abu Dhabi partnership,
despite the obvious damage that could do to the movie's green cred.

In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller,
then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black
ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government
shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism.“The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama
shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton
University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane
Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason?
Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government
considers those victims “part of the American family.”The racially charged and at times angry speech undermines Obama’s
carefully-crafted image as a leader eager to build bridges between
ethnic groups. For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he almost never
adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which
the white majority profits by exploiting black America. The mostly black
audience shouts in agreement. The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton
rally than a conventional campaign event.Obama gave the speech in the middle of a hotly-contested presidential
primary season, but his remarks escaped scrutiny. Reporters in the room
seem to have missed or ignored his most controversial statements. The
liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan linked to what he described as a
“transcript” of the speech, which turned out not to be a transcript at
all, but instead the prepared remarks provided by the campaign. In fact,
Obama, who was not using a teleprompter, deviated from his script
repeatedly and at length, ad libbing lines that he does not appear to
have used before any other audience during his presidential run. A local
newspaper posted a series of video clips of the speech, but left out
key portions. No complete video of the Hampton speech was widely
released.Obama begins his address with “a special shout out” to Jeremiah Wright,
the Chicago pastor who nearly derailed Obama’s campaign months later
when his sermons attacking Israel and America and accusing the U.S.
government of “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against
people of color” became public. To the audience at Hampton, Obama
describes Wright as, “my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels
me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great
leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country.”By the time Obama appeared at Hampton, Jeremiah Wright had become a
political problem. Wright told The New York Times earlier that year that
he would no longer be speaking on the campaign’s behalf because his
rhetoric was considered too militant. And yet later in the Hampton
speech Obama explicitly defends Wright from unnamed critics, a group he
describes as “they”: “They had stories about Trinity United Church of
Christ, because we talked about black people in church: ‘Oh, that might
be a separatist church,’” Obama said mockingly.The spine of Obama’s speech is a parable about a pregnant woman shot
in the stomach during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The baby is born with a
bullet in her arm, which doctors successfully remove. That bullet,
Obama explains, is a metaphor for the problems facing black America,
namely racism. (At a similar speech he gave in April of 2007 at the
First AME Church in Los Angeles to commemorate the 15th anniversary of
the riots, according to a church member who was there, Obama described
the slug as, “the bullet of slavery and Jim Crow.”)At least 53 people were killed during the chaos in Los Angeles, many
of them targeted by mobs because of their skin color. But Obama does not
describe the riots as an expression of racism, but rather as the result
of it. The burning and shooting and looting, he explains, amounted to
“Los Angeles expressing a lingering, ongoing, pervasive legacy, a tragic
legacy out of the tragic history of this country, a history this
country has never fully come to terms with.”And with that, Obama pivots to his central point: The Los Angeles
riots and Hurricane Katrina have racism in common. “The federal response
after Katrina was similar to the response we saw after the riots in
LA,” he thunders from the podium. “People in Washington, they wake up,
they’re surprised: ‘There’s poverty in our midst! Folks are frustrated!
Black people angry!’ Then there’s gonna be some panels, and hearings,
and there are commissions and there are reports, and then there’s some
aid money, although we don’t always know where it’s going — it can’t
seem to get to the people who need it — and nothin’ really changes,
except the news coverage quiets down and Anderson Cooper is on to
something else.”It’s at about this point that Obama pauses, apparently agitated, and
tells the crowd that he wants to give “one example because this really
steams me up,” an example that he notes does not appear in his prepared
remarks:“Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt twenty months
later,” he begins, “there’s a law, federal law — when you get
reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford
Act. And basically it says, when you get federal money, you gotta give a
ten percent match. The local government’s gotta come up with ten
percent. Every ten dollars the federal government comes up with, local
government’s gotta give a dollar.” “Now here’s the thing,” Obama continues, “when 9-11 happened in New York
City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a
problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget
that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was
the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people
said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with
y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for
you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American
family.’”That’s not, Obama says, what is happening in majority-black New
Orleans. “What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar?
Where’s your Stafford Act money?” Obama shouts, angry now. “Makes no
sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t
care about as much!”It’s a remarkable moment, and not just for its resemblance to Kayne
West’s famous claim that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,”
but also because of its basic dishonesty. By January of 2007, six months
before Obama’s Hampton speech, the federal government had sent at least
$110 billion to areas damaged by Katrina. Compare this to the mere $20
billion that the Bush administration pledged to New York City after
Sept. 11.Moreover, the federal government did at times waive the Stafford Act
during its reconstruction efforts. On May 25, 2007, just weeks before
the speech, the Bush administration sent an additional $6.9 billion to
Katrina-affected areas with no strings attached.As a sitting United States Senator, Obama must have been aware of this.
And yet he spent 36 minutes at the pulpit telling a mostly black
audience that the U.S. government doesn’t like them because they’re
black.As the speech continues, Obama makes repeated and all-but-explicit
appeals to racial solidarity, referring to “our” people and “our
neighborhoods,” as distinct from the white majority. At one point, he
suggests that black people were excluded from rebuilding contracts after
the storm: “We should have had our young people trained to rebuild the
homes down in the Gulf. We don’t need Halliburton doing it. We can have
the people who were displaced doing that work. Our God is big enough to do that.”This theme — that black Americans suffer while others profit — is a
national problem, Obama continues: “We need additional federal public
transportation dollars flowing to the highest need communities. We don’t
need to build more highways out in the suburbs,” where, the implication
is, the rich white people live. Instead, Obama says, federal money
should flow to “our neighborhoods”: “We should be investing in minority-owned businesses, in our neighborhoods, so people don’t have to travel from miles away.”The solution, Obama says, is a series of new federal programs,
including one to teach punctuality to the poor: “We can’t expect them to
have all the skills they need to work. They may need help with basic
skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the
right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office. We have to help
them get there.”In the prepared version distributed to reporters, Obama’s speech ends this way:

“America is going to survive. We won’t forget where we came from. We
won’t forget what happened 19 months ago, 15 years ago, thousands of
years ago.”

That’s not what he actually said. Before the audience at Hampton, Obama ends his speech this way:

“America will survive. Just like black folks will survive. We won’t
forget where we came from. We won’t forget what happened 19 months ago,
or 15 years ago, or 300 years ago.”

A judge on Tuesday blocked Pennsylvania's divisive voter identification requirement from going into effect on Election Day, delivering a hard-fought victory to Democrats who said it was a ploy to defeat President Barack Obama and other opponents who said it would prevent the elderly and minorities from voting.

Commonwealth
Court Judge Robert Simpson said in his ruling that he was concerned by
the state's stumbling efforts to create a photo ID that is easily
accessible to voters and that he could not rely on the assurances of
government officials at this late date that every voter would be able to
get a valid ID.

If it stands, it is good news for Obama's chances in Pennsylvania, one of the nation's biggest electoral college prizes, unless Republicans and the tea party groups that backed the law find a way to use it to motivate their supporters and possibly independents.

Simpson's ruling could be appealed to the state Supreme Court,
although state officials weren't ready to say Tuesday whether they
would appeal. He based his decision on guidelines given to him days ago
by the high court justices, and it could easily be the final word on the
law just five weeks before the Nov. 6 election.

Simpson's ruling
will allow the law to go into full effect next year, though he could
still decide later to issue a permanent injunction as part of the
ongoing legal challenge to the law's constitutionality.

Election
workers will still be allowed to ask voters for a valid photo ID, but
people without it can use a regular voting machine in the polling place
and would not have to cast a provisional ballot or prove their identity
to election officials afterward.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs called
it a "win," but they quickly targeted a multimillion-dollar state ad
campaign on TV, radio, billboards and elsewhere about the voter ID
requirement. They said they would ask the state to promptly pull the ads
or alter them to reflect the judge's ruling and suggested that they
would go back to court if the state doesn't cooperate.

"Otherwise
there is a possibility of confusion by voters and folks without ID may
just stay home because they wrongly believe they need ID," said Witold J. Walczak
of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. "It could create
confusion among poll workers and any time you have confusion on
Election Day, it's not good for democracy."

Gov. Tom Corbett, a
Republican who helped champion the law, declined comment on the ruling
and said the state's lawyers were still analyzing it.

The state's
Republican Party chairman, Rob Gleason, said he was disappointed and
stressed that the law is a "common-sense reform" that is supported in
public polling across the political spectrum. In a statement, the Obama
campaign said the decision means that "eligible voters can vote on
Election Day, just like they have in previous elections in the state."

The
plaintiffs included the Homeless Advocacy Project, the League of Women
Voters of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Simpson's
ruling came after listening to two days of testimony about the state's
eleventh-hour efforts to make it easier to get a valid photo ID. He also
heard about long lines and ill-informed clerks at driver's license
centers and identification requirements that made it hard for some
registered voters to get a state-issued photo ID.

The
6-month-old law — among the nation's toughest — has sparked a divisive
debate over voting rights and become a high-profile political issue in
the contest between Obama, a Democrat, and Republican nominee Mitt
Romney, for Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes.

It
was already a political lightning rod when a top state Republican
lawmaker boasted to a GOP dinner in June that the ID requirement "is
going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."

Pennsylvania,
traditionally considered a presidential battleground state, is showing a
persistent lead for Obama in independent polls. Pollsters had said
Pennsylvania's identification requirement could mean that fewer people ended up voting and, in the past, lower turnouts have benefited Republicans in Pennsylvania.

But
Democrats have used their opposition to the law as a rallying cry,
turning it into a valuable tool to motivate volunteers and campaign
contributions while other opponents of the law, including labor unions,
good government groups, the NAACP, AARP and the League of Women Voters, hold voter education drives and protest rallies.

The
law was a signature accomplishment of Corbett and Pennsylvania's
Republican-controlled Legislature. Republicans, long suspicious of
ballot-box stuffing in the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia, justified
it as a bulwark against any potential election fraud.

Every
Democratic lawmaker voted against it. Some accused Republicans of using
old-fashioned Jim Crow tactics to steal the White House from Obama.
Other opponents said it would make it harder for young adults,
minorities, the elderly, poor and disabled to vote.

A
wave of state voter identification requirements have been approved in
the past couple years, primarily by Republican-controlled Legislatures.

Earlier
this year, a federal court panel struck down Texas' voter ID law, and a
state court in Wisconsin has blocked its voter ID laws for now. The
Justice Department cleared New Hampshire's voter ID law, and a federal
court is reviewing South Carolina's law.

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.